


peaches

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childhood, Contentment, Family, Freedom, Gen, Laughter, Relaxing, Seasons: A Supernatural Fan Fiction Anthology, Summer, Sunshine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 15:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: Oh, Tracy, you look just like your mama,her dad used to drawl, the words draping over her like cypress, the taste of the bayou thick on his tongue.And thank god for that.Set immediately after 9.02.





	peaches

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the [Supernatural Fan Fiction Anthology project, "Seasons."](http://www.spnshortstories.tumblr.com/) This was written for the chapter on Summer.  
> Very cool to see your work in print. Thank you to my wonderful beta [Ariel,](http://www.withthedemonblood.tumblr.com) all the other contributing authors, and to Ally. <3

The metal under the floor mats has rusted away so thin in some places that she can feel hot air rushing up her bare legs as she speeds down the highway, foot glued to the gas pedal. She’s got the radio turned up loud and she twists her dark hair in the fingers she trails out the open window just to have something to do. The rosary wrapped around the rearview bumps and shakes like a rattler tail as her old car zips along, swerving past but not quite missing potholes in the dry, neglected desert roads. She catches her own eyes in her crooked side-view mirror: her mother’s eyes.

_Oh, Tracy, you look just like your mama,_ her dad used to drawl, the words draping over her like cypress, the taste of the bayou thick on his tongue. _And thank god for that._

It’s been five years since they died, and she’s had to become a woman in the meantime. Tracy’s eyes dart away from their reflections and back out the front of the windshield while on the radio Janis Joplin wails over the whipping wind, cuts through the sharp desert air with an anguish that only a woman could know. She tugs on her hair.

Tracy’s no stranger to being bound and gagged in this line of work, but there’s something about being held at the mercy of a Knight of Hell that makes her skin crawl, and no matter how free she is or how fast she speeds she just can’t seem to shake it.

Her lips still shine with grease at the corners. The flavor of mayo and bacon sticks with her like the broken record sound of Sam Winchester’s apology, murmured across a picnic table: _I’m sorry about your family._ Her burger sits like a rock in her stomach; she thought she could leave the guilt after their awkward survived-another-day lunch behind her too, and now that she’s put some distance between herself and the Winchesters she does feel infinitesimally better. She had to cross into Nevada before she was able to unclench her teeth.

She licks her lips and her other hand loosens on the steering wheel, practicing forgiveness. Her backpack rolls off the backseat into the footwell as she accelerates, clattering as blades and notebooks tumble out onto the mats, but she doesn’t bother herself with it now. Between the sage brush and telephone lines that she whips by in her teal Volkswagen, she soon comes up on a crumbling cantina coated in a thick layer of dust. It’s missing some planks in the steps leading up to the porch. It’s one of those mystical places that’s either haunted or shouldn’t exist, an unsettling hallucination or a liminal space.

She barely skids to a stop, tires grinding against the gravel in the lot next to the building, and plucks her gun from the passenger seat to tuck into her waistband. The cacti growing at the edge of the lot are taller than she is and the dust stings her nose. She flicks her sunglasses down over her eyes like armor.

She only stays long enough to use the bathroom, shoot a quick smile to the grizzled bartender, and pick up a paper by the door. There’s an article on page ten about what is either a poltergeist or demonic activity in western Maryland, and she’s not about to pass up that opportunity.

It’s been five years and she still hasn’t found the demon that gutted her parents. Hasn’t seen hide or hair of him, and for five years she hasn’t been able to sleep at night.

She barely gets any service out here in the desert, so between a lagging Google maps app and the atlas she keeps in the trunk Tracy comes up with a route that has her driving through Tuscaloosa on her way up north. She can practically smell the ripened peach trees, that sweet and cloying scent that used to stick to the collars of her dad’s white shirts, home to her grabby hands and sleepy smiles, and suddenly she misses them so profoundly it makes the feeling catch in her throat.

Sometimes, too much freedom is a curse.

_Five years_ , Tracy thinks. _Five years_.

She wonders, standing there in an empty parking lot, if they’d be proud of her now. Long legs in denim and cowboy boots, a wicked grin, bullets rolling in her pockets like the sweat that rolls down her forehead. No college degree. Daddy was the one to teach her how to shoot.

She gets back in the car and twists the key in the ignition. Her car rumbles to life under her hands, rosary shaking as Tracy peels out, gun and newspaper thrown haphazardly beside her.

Heat prickles at the back of her neck. Long, purple shadows stretch across the dirt, pulled along by the curve of the earth. Hers is the only car on the road, so she doesn’t feel bad about watching the silhouette of a lone eagle careen across the cloudless sky, so blue it almost looks painted on. The bird dips and rolls and then straightens out before passing out of her sightline.

The late afternoon sun glints off of something propped up against a boulder in the distance, and as Tracy gets closer she can see that it’s a bicycle. The white paint has mostly flaked off, revealing the sturdy but rusted frame beneath, and a large piece of cardboard is draped over the side. “Farmer’s market!” it proclaims. “Fresh peaches, next exit.”

Tracy finally eases her foot off the gas pedal.

_Five years_ , she sighs. _Five years since you’ve touched a peach._

And now, suddenly, she craves them. Not once in the half-decade she’s been an orphan has that overripe and sticky smell made her anything but sick, and now… It’s as if this whirlwind of a day has shaken something loose in her, awoken some wild thing that floors it up the exit ramp with a maniacal laugh tearing from her throat, stolen up by the wind rushing through her hair, beneath her feet, and cradled to the breast of the setting sun.

A cloud of dust rises up when her boots hit the ground. And with it, she feels her own burden lift and fall away, if for only a moment.

She eats her peach in a relaxed recline against the hood of her beat up retro clunker and slurps at the juice dripping down her chin, shamelessly indulgent. The flesh is smooth and overripe, at that perfect tipping point before it starts to turn brown and mealy. She caught this one at just the right time, just as it caught her at the right time. It reminds her of home, of her father’s grin, of her mother’s hands rolling out pie crust on the kitchen counter. She decides they’d probably be proud of her now: of what she’s endured, of who she’s grown up to be.

_Here’s to those five years,_ she commemorates. _Here’s to you, and here’s to five more._

She throws the pit into the dirt and gets back in the car with a passion rivaled only by the force of a freak desert storm.

She drives on, kicking up dust as she goes.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr!](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com/)


End file.
